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Damage and Failure of Axonal Microtubule under Extreme High Strain Rate: An In-Silico Molecular Dynamics Study
- Source :
- Scientific Reports, Scientific Reports, Vol 8, Iss 1, Pp 1-9 (2018)
- Publication Year :
- 2018
-
Abstract
- As a major cytoskeleton element of the axon, the breaking of microtubules (MTs) has been considered as a major cause of the axon degeneration. High strain rate loading is considered as one of the key factors in microtubule breaking. Due to the small size of microtubule, the real-time behavior of microtubule breaking is hard to capture. This study employs fully-atomistic molecular dynamics (MD) simulation to determine the failure modes of microtubule under different loadings conditions such as, unidirectional stretching, bending and hydrostatic expansion. For each loading conditions, MT is subjected to extreme high strain rate (108ā109 sā1) loading. We argue that such level of high strain rate may be realized during cavitation bubble implosion. For each loading type, we have determined the critical energy for MT rupture. The associated rupture mechanisms are also discussed. We observed that the stretching has the lowest energy barrier to break the MT at the nanosecond time scale. Moreover, the breakage between the dimers starts at ~16% of total strain when stretched, which is much smaller compared to the reported strain-at-failure (50%) for lower strain rate loading. It suggests that MT fails at a significantly smaller strain states when loaded at higher strain rates.
- Subjects :
- 0301 basic medicine
Materials science
lcsh:Medicine
Implosion
Bending
Molecular Dynamics Simulation
Microtubules
Article
Stress (mechanics)
03 medical and health sciences
Molecular dynamics
Breakage
Microtubule
Materials Testing
Computer Simulation
lcsh:Science
Multidisciplinary
Strain (chemistry)
lcsh:R
Strain rate
Axons
Biomechanical Phenomena
030104 developmental biology
Biophysics
lcsh:Q
Stress, Mechanical
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 20452322
- Volume :
- 8
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Scientific reports
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....939917747fdce06975ae6945cba06075